L'Aquila Italy Earthquake: Preliminary Damage Reports

Within a week of the April 6, 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, Ioannis Christovasilis, a graduate student in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at the University at Buffalo, visited the stricken region on behalf of MCEER. He was accompanied by Giuseppina Patalano, an engineer from Florence, Italy. He provided the preliminary damage reports below.

Later in the month of April, MCEER investigators Andrei Reinhorn, Professor, Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, University at Buffalo, and Gian Paolo Cimellaro, Assistant Professor, Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering, Politecnico di Torino and a graduate of the University at Buffalo’s doctoral program in earthquake engineering, joined a team from the Politecnico di Torino to conduct a more extensive survey of damage caused by the earthquake. They focused their attention on damage to infrastructure facilities, particularly electric power, water, hospitals and telecommunications, with a particular interest in the performance of historic palace monuments. They interviewed experts in the area and collected data primarily in the L’Aquila, Paganica, Onna, Castelnuovo and Sulmona areas.

This page will be continually updated as new information becomes available.